Reign of Beasts (Creature Court)

21




The sickness started that nox. The five of us were curled up in Tasha’s bed, not wanting to be alone.

I awoke in darkness to hear Livilla sobbing, and it was a short while before I realised it wasn’t just an ordinary bad dream. She had the nox sweats, a high fever. Lysandor wasn’t looking good either, shivering as he and Ashiol talked in low voices about how to smuggle Livilla to a dottore.

‘I know one,’ I said. They looked at me, and now wasn’t the time to mention how hot my skin felt, or how everything seemed to be blurring before my eyes. ‘If he’s still there. He worked at an apothecary across from the Vittorina Royale. He was a bit of an old crook — I think we can … well, not trust him, but if we pay him enough he might keep his mouth shut.’

‘Garnet, go along with Poet to grab the fellow,’ said Ashiol flatly. ‘We can always see to his silence later.’

‘Is that an order?’ Garnet challenged him.

‘For f*ck’s sake, we don’t have time for pawing the ground,’ Ashiol growled. ‘Argue the point later. Punish me later if that’s what you want. Livilla needs our help.’

Garnet scowled, but jerked his head at me and we left together. We heard Lysandor coughing as we scrambled up into the city. Livilla wasn’t the only one who was sick.



When we reached the apothecary’s, it was empty and no amount of pounding on the doors would rouse anyone from the apartment above.

Garnet pressed his fists angrily against the cool glass of the windows. ‘You haven’t sworn an oath to me yet,’ he said, staring in as if the cure for Livilla might appear on the shelf nearest to him. ‘Will you be my courteso?’

‘Of course,’ I said, surprised he had to ask. ‘Where else am I going to go?’

‘Back to your theatre?’

He looked across the street to where the Vittorina Royale queened it over every other building. There were broadsheets plastered all over the boards at the front, advertising the harlequinade and this year’s Saturnalia pantomime. They still called themselves the Mermaid Revue. A small fragment of my old life holding steady between those walls.

‘I don’t want to go back,’ I said, despite the small twitch in my stomach at the thought of it. ‘You’re my family now. Of course I’ll swear — we all will.’

‘Ashiol won’t,’ Garnet said, his eyes cold. ‘He’ll come up with some excuse, I expect. He won’t swear allegiance. He can’t stand the idea of me being above him. He won’t take orders from me.’

‘He might surprise you,’ I said.

Garnet laughed shortly. ‘You, who watch us with those beady little eyes of yours, taking in every weakness and foible, you really believe he will kneel to the son of a servant?’

I could make no such observations. The sickness had gone to my head, making it ache dreadfully, and I couldn’t see very well. But I had watched enough of Ashiol and Garnet together. There was love there, as well as competition.

‘You needn’t worry about me,’ I said. ‘I’ll swear.’

Garnet brushed his hand over my cheek, then leaned down and kissed my forehead. ‘Thank you, little ratling.’ He turned back to the window. ‘Is there anything in here that can help Livilla?’

‘Poultices maybe,’ I said dubiously. ‘Something to bring the fever down. Pastilles to soothe her throat …’

Garnet smashed the glass with his fist, spraying blood and glass everywhere, and cupped his hands as a stirrup to lift me inside. ‘If he does swear, then I’ll finally know whether I can trust him,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s something.’

As I stood on the glass-strewn floor of the apothecary, passing items out to him, I felt her coming. Closer and closer, bringing something dark and awful with her. My headache sharpened, the pain stabbing me between my eyes.

‘She’s not dead,’ I breathed. ‘Garnet, Tasha’s not dead.’

Garnet’s hand shook as I passed him the last of the poultices. ‘She’s dead,’ he said in a terrible voice. ‘I know that much.’

He scooped me back out of the window, set me on my feet, and we turned to face her.

Tasha. It was our Lord and yet not our Lord. She walked on unsteady, grey-white feet. I stared, trying to bring her into focus through the pain in my head. There was a stench about her — that familiar scent of her skin and hair and animor mixed with dirt and blood. There was something else there, too, a wrongness. If I had been in animal shape, I would have turned tail and fled whimpering into the darkness.

‘Not fair,’ Garnet said in a broken voice.

Tasha laughed, and it was then that I knew it wasn’t really her — the sound was cold and wrong. Tasha had always been warm. Some days, the heat of her had knocked us to our knees. She wasn’t here; it was just a semblance of her presence.

I could see her in sharp focus now, but nothing else around us. My skin was hot all over. As she moved closer to us, I fell to my knees, unable to keep upright any longer. The poultices we’d been stealing lay scattered on the ground and I stared mindlessly at them.

‘You made me this,’ she said in a throat that was no longer made for human words.

‘No,’ said Garnet, close to tears, or something.

‘Oathbreaker,’ Tasha hissed. ‘Because of you. My blood brought me back. You brought me back, traitor boy.’

She reached out to touch his face and I was overwhelmed by the stink — not of her body, which had hardly had time to rot, but of the power clinging to her. It was like animor, but so wrong, turned inside out and upside down. Topsy-turvy, I thought hysterically, remembering that it was Saturnalia. A bad festival for me. Madalena had died, and Tasha had dragged me into the Court, and I had killed Saturn, and Garnet had killed Tasha. The daylight people thought that Saturnalia was a time for joy, but I knew better. How could a festival in the coldest part of winter be a happy thing? No wonder it stank of death.

‘Don’t let her touch you!’ yelled a voice. Many voices.

Saved, we were saved. It was Ashiol, and he’d brought help, and I let myself slump to the cobbles, overwhelmed by the sickness that Tasha had brought back with her. It was up to them, now. The cubs and whomever they had brought with them. All I could do was die.



I was cold when I awoke, so cold that I thought I had died after all, but then I heard Livilla’s soothing voice and I slipped back into sleep.

Next time I awoke, Ashiol was there, sitting at the end of my bed, telling me how the Lord Priest had saved Garnet’s life, that they hadn’t been able to stop the Tasha-shade, she was haunting the streets still. Just as I lost consciousness again, I heard his whispered confession: that he had promised allegiance to Priest in return for saving our necks, mine and Garnet’s.



‘He’ll hate me for it, won’t he?’ he asked.

I closed my eyes. He didn’t need me to confirm what he already knew. Garnet’s prediction had come true and he would not forgive Ashiol for it.